
Gass. 
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ESUKETY OF THE UPRIGHT." 

1 . A DISCOURSE 



PREACHED ON THE OCCASION OF 







%\t $attanal Jfast 



JUNE 1, 1865, 



In tie First Parish Meeting-Honse, Saco, Maine 



, uuuu, mumu, 



B"5T TUB PASTOR 



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PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL REQUEST. 



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BIDDEFORD : 

PBINTED AT THB OFFICE OF THB UNIOS A5D JOffRSAL 

1865. 




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THE SURETY OF THE UPRIGHT." 



A DISCOURSE 



PREACHED ON THE OCCASION OF 



%\t iktiml Jfast, 



JUNE 1, 1865, 



IN THE FIRST PARISH IEETM-HOHSE, SACO, IE. 



B"5T THE FA.STOR 



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PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL BEQUEST, 






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BIDDEFORD : 

PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE UNION AND JOtrBNAL. 
1S65. 



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o 









SERMON. 



Convened to-day, my friends, in response to the proclamation of the 
Chief Magistrate of the nation, for the purpose of honoring the mem- 
ory of him who so recently executed its counsels, and around whose 
bier, as of that of a martyr, the people have so universally gathered 
for the last offices of a cherished affection — how can we better improve 
the occasion than by a review of the life and services of our late la- 
mented Chief. And in that review can we find words more appropri- 
ately expressing that life, with its consecration to country and to God, 
than those of the Roy&l Preacher, contained in the 10th Chapter of 
Proverbs and the 9th verse, " He that walketh uprightly walketii 

SURELY." 

For to do right is better than to possess a kingdom. This condition 
of all true greatness enforced by a Bible Philosophy has ever been, is 
constantly being illustrated in Human History. This Scriptural idea 
of a true life Providence is ever unfolding to men, and has held up to 
the esteem, the confidence, and the love of the American People in the 
character of Abraham Lincoln. 

If at any time we are justified in rehearsing the virtues of the de- 
parted, in eulogizing their name or their deeds, one motive alone should 
control such action ; a motive that springs from a hope to re-produce 
those virtues in the living. And thus, while nothing that the choicest 
eloquence or the fondest affections could utter shall in the least affect 
the dead, in whose quiet homes nor human hate or love can disturb, 
may a review of their life stimulate us to re-produce the good and the 
worthy in their character. With such a motive let us look at the life 
and services of our deceased President. 

Among those qualifications of character or condition which so Provi- 
dentially fitted him for his great trust we at once recognize the circum- 
stances of his early life. 

Mr. Lincoln was a man from the people. Not only one among them, 



but one of them. He belonged to the Aristocracy of the masses, not 
of the few ; of nature not of art. His claim to notice and to confi- 
dence gains not an iota from ancestry, wealth or power, beyond, indeed, 
the claims of an honest, hard-working, pious parentage. 

He was poor by "birth. Toil, self-denial, and self-reliance, that "Tri- 
umvirate " of real worth, were among his earliest experiences. In com- 
mon with his toilsome father he was compelled, from early boyhood, to 
take his share in the common inheritance of doing something for a live- 
lihood. Those first years, passed in the backwoods of a Western State, 
at a great remove from the so called amenities of cultivated society, 
trained him — not in the culture of the schools — in the use of the axe, 
of the plough, of the sickle ; all other, his strictly educational advan- 
tages of early life, beyond his own personal efforts to obtain them, 
were comprised in six months at the District School House of his own 
neighborhood. 

He was most emphatically a self-made man : the former of his own 
fortune ; and a favoring Providence, smiling upon and directing a faith- 
ful self-sacrifice, is the explanation of that elemental greatness that 
was fitting him for the highest trust in the nation. 

In this lowly origin; its obscurity; its demands upon a retrenching 
economy; its privations; its associates and associations, Abraham Lin- 
coln was allying himself with the common people. And in these 
outwardly infelicitous beginnings we recognize a wise Providence. He 
was to be the ruler of a people whose civil polity is so essentially a 
government of and by the masses. He was also to be the Leader of a 
down-trodden race, their Joshua to the Canaan of Liberty ; he must 
know of poverty, of trial, of obscurity, in order that he may be one with 
the people. It is in such toils, in such an origin that we find the germ 
of that broad and generous sympathy which linked him so closely with 
all who were needy ; the aim.. power he had over the people ; 

a power not alone of 3, but that other and winning power, the 

of a neighborly, hearty, appreciating fellow-feeling. Treading 
svdier walks of social life, Mr. Lincoln was practically alive to its 
:.-■ an 1 Its claims: you could not raise him above a fellow-feeling 
for the people; in the truest sense he was a "plebeian," and we have 
oul gratitude to Grod that he was. 



It was, in part, this straitness of condition, hallowed by Parental 
example, that laid the foundation for that industry, that useful view of 
things; that common sense which enabled him to regard men and mea- 
sures from the stand-point of their practical worth, and to divest them 
of merely abstract, bewildering theories. And these qualifications, 
resting upon a remarkably clear judgment, kept him from being lost 
amid the labyrinths and breakers of a most perilous administration. 

In our Departed Leader we discern also a rare honesty of heart. 
Here he was above all suspicion. In this he was of " the noblest work 
of Clod." Even his enemies— and of these he had as few as any one 
could have bad, who should have been called to fill his position at such 
a crisis— cannot lay a finger upon a dishonest act, his own. Amono- 
his neighbors this virtue secured for him the somewhat homely yet no° 
ble cognomen of " Honest Abe ; " as chief of the nation, the social and 
neighborhood became the national title, and still he was '< Honest Abe." 
This honesty was perhaps the outgrowth of a certain inborn sense 
of the fitness of things. Mr. Lincoln's system of morals was ultimate 
and not accessory. *Right, because it is Right, was his motto. How 
transparently clear does this rectitude of purpose show itself in his 
whole public life ! With temptations to the contrary such as befall few 
men, the first exponent of a so styled new political party, what might 
he not have been expected to have done for that party ! But instead 
of such expediences his justness of view embraces the whole public 
good. And even in the choice of his Advisers, as well of those who 
should fill high positions in the Field, we find men of all previous po- 
litical preferences : the one test being, is he true, is he qualified for the 
post. In these particulars he might have regarded partizanship more, 
— if indeed he were ever moved by merely sectional interests— and 
still have preserved the bounds of the majority of his Predecessors. 
But no. He was above an unmanly chicanery. This to the " manor- 
born " integrity, this single-eyed justness fitted the President to adminis- 
ter justice upon broad and ultimate principles : to give to all their due ; 
to respect the persons of none in judgment ; to give due weight to any 
appeal to the right come whence or how it may. And so it was that 
with the exception of his kindliness of heart, amid that brilliant gal- 
axy of virtues that brightened in the man, none shone with a steadier 



6 



brilliancy than his correct and impassioned judgment. This raised him 
largely, we do not say perfectly, above the fog and the side lights of 
party favor and sectional interests. His citizenship, as that of our 
first fathers, was the whole country ; his duty, her welfare. Toward 
this these salient and rare qualities were ever directing him. Mark 
their influence in his straightforward conceptions of the Declaration of 
Independence, and of our Fathers' interpretation of its self-evident 
truths : 

This was their interpretation of the economy of the universe, this their lofty, wise and noble un- 
derstanding of the justice of the Creator to his Creatures — to the whole family of man. In their 
enlightened belief nothing stamped with the Divine Image and Likeness was sent into the world to be 
trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. * * * * Wise statesmen as they were, 
they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident 
truths, that when, in the distant future, some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the 
doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were 
entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the 
Declaration of Independence, and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that 
truth, and justice and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished 
from the land ; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit the great principles on which the temple 
of Liberty was being built. 

We observe, also, in Mr. Lincoln an independence and self-reliance 
of judgment that strengthened him in following the dictates of a clear 
head and an honest heart. Virtues these, which if controlled by an 
impassioned nature and a pure patriotism, are among the choicest as 
they appeal the most strongly to a people's confidence in their Chief 
Ruler. In our lamented President, however, this self-confidence was 
never self-opinioned. He was ready to ask counsel from his Constitu- 
tional Advisers ; not above seeking help, to enable him to decide, he 
yet seems to have followed the leadings of his personal judgment upon 
all questions and measures of which he felt himself confident to be the 
judge : a quality that saves a Ruler much confusion amid the counter- 
currents of an officious, intermeddling, and a man-pleasing expediency. 

And because of this he was comprehensive in his views. President 
Lincoln did not act hastily because he did not decide hastily, lie took 
the time to look over the whole field embraced in a given measure or 
plan. Hence his readiness to yield to the logic of events; his wise 
conservatism, and again his universal justness of action. Hence he be- 
came the exponent of principles, and of party only as party embodied 
principles. The Constitution, the Union, and Liberty are the key 
notes to his Administration. 

This innate clearness and breadth of view, upreared upon justice and 



integrity, led him to the deservedly great acts of his public life. There- 
fore it was he put his seal to the writ of freedom iu the District of 
Columbia : therefore he signed that paper which alone will make his 
name a household word and his administration a cherished era in our 
nationality, that paper which shall be the " Great Magna Charta " for 
the rallying of the oppressed in every land, the bright and the glorious 
Deed of Emancipation. Frown and favor were equally ignored in this 
determination of fearless honesty to do justly. Hear it as with chosen 
words it confirms the righteous act : 

I repeat the declaration I made a year ago, and that while I remain in my present position I shall 
not attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any 
person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress. If the peo- 
ple should, by whatever mode or means, make it an executive duty to re-inslave such persons, another, 
not I, must be then' instrument to perform it. 

And again — 

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. 
Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth qf the bondmen's 250 years of unrequited toil 
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with 
the sword, as was said 5000 years ago, so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true 
and righteous altogether. 

This comprehensive justice recommended the Constitutional Amend- 
ment, so that henceforth the Charta of the nation should be construed 
in favor of Liberty ; and in the following forcible terms repeated the 
recommendation : 

At the last session of Congress a proposed amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery 
throughout the United States, failed for lack of the requisite two-thirds vote iu the House of Repre- 
sentatives. Although the present is the same Congress and nearly the same members, and without 
questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition, I venture to recommend the 
re-consideration and passage of the measure at the present session. Of course the abstract question 
is not changed, but an intervening election shows almost certainly that the next Congress will pass 
the measure. * * * It is the voice of the people, now for the first time, heard upon the question. 
In a great national crisis like ours, unanimity of action, among those seeking common ends, is very 
desirable and almost indispensable, and yet no approach to unanimity is allowable, unless some defer- 
ence shall be paid to the will of the majority, simply because it is the will of the majority. 

In this case our common end is the maintenance of the Union ; and among the means to secure 
that end, such will, through the election, is most clearly declared in favor of such constitutional 
amendment. 

He was then true to justice and to freedom : equitable to all parts 
of the country ; firm in sustaining the right at all hazards ; this he was 
" willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die 
by." His convictions slowly received were unshaken when reached. 
Some of his friends were at times fearful that this conservatism and 
tenderness of nature might fetter him in meeting the claims of an im- 
perilled freedom and a fratricidal treason ; but in the event, did we not 
see that our fears were groundless, as we felt the superior discretion 
of the man whose broad and dispassionate acts were meeting each curt- 



gency as it came, firmly marshalling the whole power of the government 
for its support or its overthrow ? 

And on the other hand this self-same justness of character kept him 
from a vindictive treatment of the foes of the nation. It was seen in 
the unshaken will, that calm counsels and equitable measures should 
control; a determination — -so long as it were possibly consistent with 
the public safety — -to preserve inviolate the Constitutional privileges 
of the rebellious States themselves, and as interpreted by them ; there- 
fore the famous Fremont order was modified, and subsequently that of 
Gen. Hunter ; (orders that anticipated by a few months only the course 
which the Government was compelled to pursue) this it was that rec- 
ommended a gradual emancipation in Mr. Lincoln's first message to 
Congress. In view of these facts, is it presumptuous to say, that but 
few men, raised as he, and under the pressure of events with which he 
came to the government, would' have governed themselves and the peo- 
ple with such wise forbearance ? And yet we hear of violations of the 
Constitution ; of overbearing power ; of party measures ; of a settled 
determination to override liberty, justice and law, as though the whole 
crime and responsibility of this war lay at the door of the freedom- 
loving and loyal North ? Fact and theory prove the charge false. 

Mr. Lincoln was also a modest man. This essential accompaniment 
of true nobility shone with a mild brilliance through his whole life. 
Parade of power was not in him. He was Jeffersonian in the sim- 
plicity of his adornments. Republicanism has seldom been more 
truthfully embodied in that absence of pomp, and that glittering of 
titles, forms and fashions which do so much to sustain a throne, as when 
it sat in the chair of the sixteenth Presidency at Washington. The 
greatness of a Republic consists not in its surroundings, but in itself, 
it is sense and not sound; this grand distinction President Lincoln held 
up steadily and truthfully during his whole life at the Capitol. 

How this plainness of demeanor shows itself when as a conqueror 
he entered Richmond! What an illustration of conscious power, of 
fatherly love and confidence! A father, in the manner of a father, un- 
attended by an army of gleaming bayonets, with serried front ami 
overweening pride to fatten upon the defeats of the foe, he goes with 
his dear boy by his side, in all the beauty of home love to* counsel, to 



9 

sympathize with and to bless his wayward children. I have said that 
he relied not upon the good right arms that had opened the way into 
the long beleagured city, but he did not make his entrance wholly with- 
out a retinue. So soon as it was found that he was there, the word 
was passed on through friend and through foe, and the good man was 
speedily surrounded by a body guard, composed of exultant, dusky 
warriors ; shouting not in the notes of war, but with the glad ac- 
cents of a peaceful liberty, the praises of their Deliverer, as in the 
earnest tones of the African tongue blessings were implored upon 
his head. There goes the modest man, the head of one of the great- 
est kingdoms the sun shines upon, a victor, making his entrance upon 
a conquered province, no peal of trumpets, no waving of banners, no 
heraldry and show of power ; save as the dark clouds flanking him on 
either hand bespoke his power, his goodness, his love of justice, his 
safety, and his peans of welcome are the benedictions of the enfran- 
chised slave. 

Observe, moreover, the modesty of the man as it appears in the mat- 
ter and the form of his public papers. These, many of which promised 
in themselves fame enough for the highest ambition, all of them, couched 
in terms so quietly diffident that we almost forget the man in the deed. 
Mark this spirit in that matchless close to the Charta of Liberty : 
" Upon this sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the 
Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judg- 
ment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty Grod." In that 
paper, which of itself is sufficient, will be sufficient to stamp his ad- 
ministration with the accordant and swelling praises of the nations in 
all coming time : that which dealt the final blow at the rebellion 
because it struck at its true vitality : that which is the crowning ex- 
cellence of the past four years of mingled trial and blessing : that 
which is the characteristic of the late Presidential Term — how mod- 
estly it reads, how little of drawing attention to the noble heart that 
concej^ed it. And this, my friends, is the modesty of true greatness ; 
one of the attractive though mildly shining virtues in his life. 

But there is a certain charm about the character of Mr. Lincoln that 
more than all enshrines his memory in the nation's affection, it is his 
kindliness of heart. This it is upon which we so much love to dwell, 



10 

and towards which we ever find our thoughts turning when we think of 
the man, — and of the dark deed which took him from us, the darker 
by reason of the true loveliness of its victim. He was a Father to his 
Countrymen ; even to his rebellious children he showed the never-failing 
tenderness of a Parent. Hear how he expostulates with those who 
sought his life, and what was dearer still to him the life of the nation ; 
mark the patient, the mild, the paternal expostulation, and as you read 
love the more : 

My Countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable 
can be lost by taking time. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who 
has never yet forsaken his favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our diffi- 
culties. 

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil 
war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the ag- 
gressors. You have no oath registered iu heaven to destroy the Government ; while I shall have the 
most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it ! 

Will you hazard so desperate a step, while any portion of the ills you fly from have no real exist- 
ence? Will you, while the certaiu ills you fly to, are greater than all the real ones you fly from? 
All profess to 'be content in the Union if all Constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, 
that any right, plainly written in the Constitution has been denied ? I think not. * * * * I am 
loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may 
have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection. The mystic chord of memory, stretching 
from every battle Held and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad 
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better 
angels of our nature. 

This at the commencement of his Presidency and with the terrible 
fact of civil war full in view : the close of that Presidential Term, and 
the two-fold honor of victorious arms and the reaffirmed choice of the 
people that he should still rule over them, did not abate of that calm 
consideration and expostulating love, as with a renewed devotion to his 
country's welfare he writes : 

So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am 
duly sensible to the high compliment of a re-election an 1 duly grateful as I trust, to Almighty God 

for having directed ray countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their g 1, it adds nothing 

to my satisfaction that any cither man may be disappointed by the result. May I ask those who 
have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit toward those who have. 

And — 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God giv ■> OS to see 
tin- light, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for 
him wlio shall have borne the battle, and for ins widow and his orphans : to do all which may achieve 
and cherish a just and a lasting peace aiming ourselves and all nations. 

It is such a tenderness of love, such a thoughtful regard for others' 
welfare that bind him so closely to our hearts, that open their-^nner- 
most chambers of cherished affection for the indwelling of the good 
man's memory. And when the lite ami services of Abraham Lincoln 
arc recorded upon the Historic page, or more lovingly still, are em- 
balmed in the hearts and the homes of the nation, there, above all, 



11 



pervading all, adorning even the severer passages of his life of faithful 
service for his country, will be the home love, the warm and sympa- 
thizing heart that moved in and hallowed all the rest. 

A review of such a life, however, is not complete that leaves out his 
unshaken confidence in God. 

President Lincoln was not a religious boaster; but he was eminently 
under the control of a religious fear. In his usual frank manner he 
leaves us in no doubt about his religious history, while in substance, 
he says : 

When I went to Washington I was not a Christian, though I reverenced the Christian faith ; but 
when, on the bloody field of Gettysburg, I looked in the musings of my soul upon the countless dead, 
those cheerful martyrs for my country, then and there I hope I gave myself to Christ. 

We have buried a Christian Ruler ; one who loved to recognize his 
dependence upon Godj who, from first to last, cast himself in faith 
upon the prayers of the faithful, and the all wise lluler of Heaven and 
earth. So all-pervading is this spirit of humble trust, that we can 
place our hand upon scarcely a public document of his in which this 
truth is not acknowledged. And those unfoldings of this life of trust 
away from the din and bewilderments of official cares ; that affection- 
ate tribute to his devotional spirit, to his childlike faith which a Pastor's 
heart has given over the dust of the martyred man ; the unostentatious 
request to a minister of the gospel, at the close of an interview upon 
official business, for prayer — these shew where the deeper currents of his 
life were sweeping,. and the sources of that strength which held him up 
in the midst of toils and responsibilities that have fallen to the lot of 
few before him. Is it presumptuous to say that in his experience 
the promise was fulfilled, " I will keep him in perfect peace, whose 
mind is staid on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee ? " 

Such is an imperfect sketch of him whom the nation is mourning. 
Such was the man who died, a martyr to Freedom. Struck down by 
the hand of cowardly hate, in the back, a hatred too mean to look into 
that open, honest, manly face and strike the blow. And he was killed 
in a theatre. Do we thereby endorse the frequenting for amusement 
those resorts of vice; those devises for killing time and dissipating 
morals ; by no means. We would our revered President had met his 
end, if he must be murdered, upon other ground and under other cir-* 
cumstances, yet was it the goodness of his heart, for the time overcoming 



12 

his usually clear judgment that induced him to go, that the people 
might not be disappointed. With no advocacy, then, for the theatre, 
but with every objection to it from its evils and its evil tendencies, I 
Still find myself judging with leniency an act flowing from so kindly a 
motive as that which led our late President like a sheep to his slaugh- 
ter. 

For Mr. Lincoln we make no claim to blamelessness of life, nor 
would we be chargeable with the folly of a fulsome adulation. He 
was a man. But he was a man of a thousand. He was a man of rare 
purity of life, of speech, of judgment and of sense ; of far-seeing and 
philosophical mind : of honesty crystal in its clearness ; of a genuine 
kindness of soul that as the gentle heat of the sun in time of bud and 
blossom distils a generous warmth and life throughout his entire course ; 
and he was of unimpeachable, unsuspicious, and unsuspected patriotism ; 
while through all, chastening, directing, elevating all, was a simple 
trust in God. 

True to thy God, — thou cans't not then be false 
To man, nor traitor to thy country prove, — 
Most loyal, if thy loyalty have root 
In love of Heaven, for Freedom and the Rifjht ! 

Seldom are a people called to mourn such a Ruler. This wise coun- 
sellor; pure patriot; beneficent father ; wicked hands have slain. The 
assassination of so good and so great a man, so needed as we thought, 
so widely beloved as he was, naturally suggests an enquiry as to the 
cause of his death. What killed him ? Why did he die ? Bear with 
me, my friends, then in a rapid review of the cause of that murder as 
it shows itself in the history of that which, in the blow that fell upon 
our martyred Lincoln, aimed at the life of the Republic. 

That he was a victim to the same spirit that brought upon us this 
civil war is beyond a reasonable doubt. His murder was no tragedy ; 
it was not the work of insanity. If tragedy there were it was the 
same that has been enacted these four years in the dark dramas of 
Southern Prisons ; in the chivalrous attempts to weaken our forces by 
deliberately starving our braves; if insanity there were, it was no 
more, no less blameworthy than that moral insanity which has run 
its mad course against the nation's peace and the nation's life. The 
tragedy is that of the slave power enacted ever upon the theatre of hu- 
man woes and human life ; the madness is the madness of the traitor ; 



13 



of both which much has been seen and heai-d these four years past. 
The death of President Lincoln was the bitter ripening of the fruit of 
that Upas Tree which since the existence of the American Nationality 
has been throwing its poisonous shadows so widely and with such pes- 
tilential blastings over the continent. 

Let us refresh our memories and in calm review confirm these asser- 
tions. 

" Liberty (said the fearless preacher to Louis 14th) belongs to human 
nature." 

" We hold, (said our Fathers) these truths to be self-evident, that all 
men are born free and equal ; endowed by their Creator with certain 
inalienable rights ; among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness." And the French Divine and our Revolutionary Heroes 
were right. But in the face of these self-evident and birthright truths, 
from the adoption, almost, of our Constitution, through to the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, Slavery has had the strong hand in our 
Government. The minority has ruled the majority, the very antithesis 
of popular government. Its demands, made with a presumption 
equalled only by its guilt, were answered by concessions. Is this not 
true ? Let us see ; why was the three-fifth clause engrafted into our 
Constitution ? Why were the first thirty-six Presidential years, if we 
except one term, under the administration of Southern Presidents? 
What meant the mode and provisos in our purchase of Louisiana? 
What* testimony does the Missouri Compromise give? What the war 
with Mexico ; the Fugitive Slave Bill ; the Burns decision ; the Dred 
Scott verdict ; the Kansas and Nebraska Bill ; the attempted purchase 
of Cuba ! What, my friends, is the concurrent testimony of these 
facts, patent in the history of our legislation ? 

That no one may suppose an unfair statement of the case, hear again 
what honorable Senators and Governors from the South themselves have 
said, and in their undisguised words and arrogant demands read the 
same truths. Said a Senator from Virginia, in his place upon the floor 
of the Senate Chamber, as he repeated the demands of the Slave Power 
upon the National Government, and reaffirmed that which alone would 
satisfy the South ; among other demands : 



14 
% 

Congress shall have no power to abolish Slavery in the States or the District of Columbia or the 
dockyards, forts, and arsenals of the United States. 

Congress shall not abolish, tax, or obstruct the Slave trade between the States. 

It shall be the duty of the States to restore fugitive Slaves, or pay the value of the same, &c, &c. 

An Ex-Governor of South Carolina in a letter written at the close 
of 1860, says : 

Slavery is stronger than the Union. I don't think there is the least chance of re-constructing 
the Confederation on the former basis. We will have no other Union than one in which the 
Slave power shall largely and permanently predominate. 

The following extract is significant upon the often repeated charge 
against the Government, of violating Constitutional privileges; it is 
from the Governor of Florida's annual message of Nov. 1860 : 

I most decidedly declare that the proper action is secession from our faithless, perjured confede- 
rates. But some Southern men object to secession until some overt act of unconstitutional power 
shall have been committed by the General Government j that we ought not to secede, until the 
President and Congress unite in passing an act unequivocally hostile to our institutions, and fraught 
with immediate danger to our rights of property. But why wait for this overt act of the Govern- 
ment f 

And because the freedom-loving citizens of the land decided in a 
constitutional manner, with all quietness and order, that these demands 
can no longer be acceded to, and that henceforth the Government must 
be administered in the interests of " equal rights to all," in the place 
of a peaceable acquiescence to the will of this constitutional majority, (as 
the North had acquiesced — against their convictions of justice, for 
more than fifty years) the Slave Power demanded a re-organization of 
the Federal Government, so as to confirm to it forever all it demanded ; 
and when every sense of right and of humanity cried out against such 
a course, then and there disappointed lust of power began to work of 
treason and of war. And thus the war came. Five millions insolently 
demanding of twenty millions that their own individual demands should 
be yielded, right or wrong, in accordance with or opposed to the will of 
the majority. 

Thus, my friends, the crime had worked, as a deadly virus, into the 
whole body politic! Senators dared, with shameless face, almost unre- 
buked, to flaunt treason under the very dome of the Capitol ; officers 
of the Government, educated and paid out of its treasury, openly or 
secretly plotting its overthrow; nay, in the very Cabinet itself, aiming 
the Counsellors of the Chief lluler of the people, covert fraud or more 
open treason was weakening the effective force of the nation to oppose 
the full born treason when its time should have come. 

The South being judge, the unconcealed boasts of its chief men being 



15 



witnesses, this conspiracy was a long cherished plan. For more than 
a generation there were those elected to choose righteous laws that the 
people may be governed well, whose avowed object was to prepare the 
way for a dismembered nationality, and a Confederacy the chief corner 
stone of which was to be Slavery. What no longer could be accom- 
plished in concessions to unrighteous demands, was attempted by the 
tragic insanity of secession and a civil war. And thus the war came. 

What then, in all candor, what, from the past was the prospect for 
the future ? What, but the riveting of the chains of oppressive domi- 
natlon? What, but the widening of the area of the Slave Power? 
What, but the wheeling of the whole force of the Government into the 
services of oppression ! Continued concession meant, and meant only 
concession to the Slave interests. 

Then and thus (as a candid review of our history for the past fifty 
years clearly shows), came the issue. The South would have war 
rather than the Government should continue as it was, the North would 
rather accept war than a national dismemberment. And thus the war 
came ! Who inaugurated it ? whose is the responsibility of all this 
outpouring of blood and of treasure ? Let an impartial review of the 
past answer. The issue came. Sumter electrified the nation. Its 
thunders were the mutterings of the storm whose wild sweep has strewn 
desolations and wrecks throughout the whole land. But it was the be- 
ginning of the end. The supporters of the Government said the land 
shall be free. The sophistry of State Rights shall not be longer con- 
strued for sectional interests ; if war must come, we accept war, and 
relying upon the God of truth and justice we will do valiantly for 
liberty and the right ; our children shall be free. And the war came. 
Its years of sorrows, such as this fair land had never witnessed, have 
been stern but faithful instructors. Through the gloom and the night 
we have learned where our true strength lay. We have found that 
justice is the mijhtiest power in the Universe; we have heard that cry 
which for wearisome years had been going up into the ear of the God 
of Justice elsewhere, here, at home, around our own hearthstones, as 
the wailings of unrecpuited toil have been, are now being re-echoed in 
the sighingis of stricken hearts and homes that in vain wait for the 
loved and the departed. The terrible fulfillments of the bondman's 



16 

curse have swept the broad Savannahs of the South as a Simoon; they 
have fallen in (he bitterness of grief upon the peaceful firesides of the 
North, until all are realizing that justice is the mightiest power in the 
Universe. There is power in the cry of the oppressed ; their Deliverer 
is mighty. And though at the first we would not heed it, we have 
heeded it; justice has in part been done. For — 

* Beginning the war upon Political grounds, we have been compelled to advance it to moral grounds. 
Beginning the war, on the part of Rulers and Generals, that looked to the conservation of Slavery as 
well as of the Union, both rulers and generals, and soldiers and people, "have been taught that the 
Union can be preserved only through the destruction of Slavery. We could not have it otherwise if 
we would. We have do choice in the matter, and have had none from the first. It was Slavery that 
prompted the Rebellion ; it was Slavery that was to profit by the war ; it was the Slave Power that 
would arise upon the ruins of the Constitutional Union and Liberty ; and to save these we were com- 
pelled to smite the smiter and destroy the destroyer. Slavery had so far triumphed over the politics 
of the country, over the commerce of the country, and even over the religion of the country, that 
only a war which should exterminate its roots from the soil, could check its growing supremacy. The 
war was rendered a necessity by the alarming encroachments of that huge organic iniquity that 
lifted itself against all the forces and aims of modern civilization. 

And since we have begun to do justly, the tide of success has set stead- 
ily toward the Government. Truth, Liberty, Right have triumphed ; 
the rebellion is overcome ; the war, we fondly trust, is over ; we are 
anxiously, yet with overflowing hearts waiting to welcome the armies 
of Freedom to our hearthstones. He under whose wise and firm rule, 
by the blessing of God, this victory was accomplished, lives not on 
earth to witness the glorious results of his toil and his sacrifice ; but 
though dead he lives ; his soul is marching on through the land and 
awakening in every valley and upon every mountain top the new born 
anthems of a regenerated nationality. 

But the work is not done. Success is not all. We have now to gird 
ourselves for another and a scarcely less momentous responsibility, viz : 
wisely to use our victories. In the excitement of the conquest we 
must not forget how it was secured. In one word it was by doing 
justly. " He that walketh uprightly, walketh surely." In the rebuild- 
ing of the wastes this war has made, we cannot lose sight of the great 
price wherewith we purchased this freedom. Justice is still the might- 
iest power in the Universe. It must be admitted in the interests of 
the enfreed slave. He has fought and fought bravely, for us ; he has 
risked everything for our success. With a generous forgetfulness of 
our treatment of him he has never refused a call we have made upon 
1 lit 1 1 for his help; his blood has mingled with that of other patriots on 

* New Bnglander, April, 18C5, pp. 307, 308. 



17 

the ensanguined field ; his knowledge and his patriotism we have used, 
he has unhesitatingly, cheerfully given them ; always true to the old 
flag, him we could trust. And though in the first months of the war 
we repulsed these generous offers, scorning to learn of a slave, sending 
him back again to his toil and his chains, the sad experience of the 
course shewed us our folly, our sin. Justice has been begun to be 
meted out to the patriot of color. A military necessity first broke the 
dawning of what we most devoutly trust is to be the full-orbed day of 
a completed liberty by the universal voice of the nation. But justice 
has been only begun. We must go on to do justly; following the 
leadings of a wise freedom, fearlessly and unhesitatingly. And for 
ourselves, no less than for the colored race, if we would reap the full 
blessings of these years of sorrow we must give the full franchise to 
the enfreed slave. This rebellion is conquered but in name if we fail 
to give the freedman the right to a voice in the election of his rulers. 
Wherever there is intelligence sufficient to understand the responsibili- 
ties of the franchise, (jive the "privilege. And where this does not now 
exist, as it cannot in the great majority of the liberated bondmen, let 
them be educated so that they can understand and can intelligently ex- 
ercise the first and most sacred privilege of the Republic. Do this 
and Slavery is forever banished the Continent ; withhold it and we have 
a conflict before us that generations to come must share in and suffer 
for. 

Justice must be done the leaders of the rebellion. The public con- 
science must be quickened respecting the awfuluess of that crime that 
strikes at the nation's life. The American nation must feel, and must 
show to the civilized world by its action, that Treason is a foul crime, 
not a misfortune. It is national murder ; its only adequate punish- 
ment is the penalty of murder. Its true nature cannot be better 
expressed than in the words of the chief leader of the rebellion when, 
in a speech in Fanueil Hall, Boston, in 1858, he said : 

Among culprits, there is none more odious to my mind than a public officer who takes an oath 
to support the Constitution — the compact between the States binding each other for the common de- 
fence and general welfare of the other — yet retains to himself a mental reservation that he will war 
upon the principles he has sworn to maintain, and upon the property rights, the protection of which 
are part of the compact of the Union. It is a crime too low to be named before this assembly. It 
is one which no man with self-respect would ever commit. To swear that he will support the Consti- 
tution — to take an office which belongs in many of its relations to all the States, and to use it as a 
means of injuring a portion of the States of which he is thus the representative, is treason to every- 
thing honorable in man. It is a base and cowardly attack of him who gains the confidence of another, 
in order that he may wound him. 



18 



The doctrine is sounder than the practice. Out of his own mouth 
let him be judged. And is this advocated because we love the taking of 
life ? nay, by no means ; but because we value its priceless boon too 
dearly to allow it recklessly to be imperilled. Without fear then of 
incurring the charge of bloodthirstiness, or of an unchristian spirit, 
terms, more commonly than carefully used, to deter us from the straight- 
onward course of justice, we advocate an impartial trial of the chief 
traitors by a jury of their countrymen ; if convicted, let them suffer 
the penalty justly due so wholesale, so wicked, so causeless, so savagely 
cruel a slaughter of the people. Wisely and firmly just we can then 
be wisely and considerately clement. But here, as in God's govern- 
ment, "justice and judgment must be the pillars of our throne, that 
righteousness and peace may go before us." Yet in the gloom and the 
night there have been gleams of a clear-shining after the storm. 

Gratitude becomes us, my friends, in view of the watchful care of 
an overruling Providence during the war ; that the national power and 
prosperity have been so largely maintained ; that the internal resources 
of the country have been developed so wonderfully and in so increasing 
a ratio these four years ; that the kindly social virtues, the sweet sym- 
pathies of the heart have been so much cherished. What other nation, 
may we not say, without boasting, would have passed through the scenes 
of the 14th of April last, with so little change in its civil and its social 
states. Our beloved leader assassinated ; at a time when to us he 
seemed so essential to the nation ; the treason that sought the life of the 
nation taking his ; yet in a few hours his successor is cpiietly inaugu- 
rated, the wheels of government move on harmoniously and steadily as 
before, and with the exception of the universal weeping and wailing for 
the martyred dead, who would have supposed we had sustained a blow 
which would have sprung anarchy and bloody revolution upon almost 
any other people on the globe? There is a reserve of power in a 
Christian Republic. When Providence makes drafts upon that re- 
serve they arc always honored. The nation is not dead ; nor is its 
civil status in the least imperilled; we are in no danger of military 
despotism, or civil disruption. The Lord hath done these things for 
us whereof we arc glad. 

Fearful as the trial has been, it is opening to us a future of glorious 



19 

promise. The iron hand has unlocked the gates of brass ; war has 
levelled the high walls of a hoary prejudice, so that there is now a 
highway 'twixt the nations ; this people are now entering upon one of 
the grandest eras of the world ; the state and the church have before 
them a work rich in its bestowments ; the servants of the Lord Jesus 
Christ are being ushered into the work of entering in and possessing 
the land ; the harvest is waiving white ; an enfreed South will demand 
and must have an unfettered gospel : the nation calls for, Christ wants, 
the times are demanding earnest, prompt, devoted workers. And the 
work has already begun. On the Southern slope of the dividing 
ridge an enfreed gospel is being proclaimed ; self-sacrificing laborers 
have followed closely in the rear of the fight with the messages which 
heal the ills of the human heart and speak peace to the troubled ; even 
now the busy hum of the school room is heard where the sons of an 
unrequited toil are being trained for a free nationality and a citizenship 
in the skies. All is not dark. O'erarching the blackness of the storm- 
girt horizon the bow appears ; it sweeps the zenith ; under its inspiring 
regis we are to rise to a greatness and a justness of power equalled only 
by the grandeur of the ends this people are to accomplish in the econ- 
omy of the world. 

Not boastingly, but with faith to see and use the signs of promise, 
may we predict a united, a free, a stronger, a purer nationality by rea- 
son of the white rfeat that has welded it. Thus shall the nation, out 
of her own recent trials ; from the examples of the good and the great 
of the past ; confirmed and adorned in that pure, gentle, yet firm life 
so ruthlessly taken (yet not without its completion), learn that, for her- 
self as for her lamented Chief, "to have walked uprightly, was to have 
walked surely." 

Yes thou cherished and honored man we mourn thy death ; but we 
may not murmur. The good Lord doeth all things well. We bless 
the hand that bestowed so rich and timely a gift upon us. The Lord, 
he it was who gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of 
the Lord. 

But though absent thou art still with us. Thy memory we cherish 
in the living gratitude of the heart. We would thou couldst have lived 
to rejoice in the blessings thou wert the means of leaving to thy great 



20 

family. Thou leddest us up to the borders but wert not permitted to 
enter the land. Yet do we know the place of thy sleeping. We charge 
the home of thy adoption tenderly and securely to treasure thy dust in 
its flowery sepulchre ; keep it thou prairied land till the last trump 
shall sound. 

Rest then beloved leader in peace. And if from thy home on high 
thou art permitted to look again upon the widowed and the fatherless ; 
to watch over the land and the people thou didst die to redeem, may it 
be to see thy toils, thy sacrifice and thy prayers fulfilled in a nation 
saved, and a land forever enfreed. Living we loved and we honored 
thee ; departed we can best cherish thy memory by reproducing thy 
life. 

Let us, my friends, so act, that in this opportunity of God's favoring 
Providence we may be enabled, from the desolations of the past, to 
rear a nationality that can truly be called, "The land of the free." 



S '12 



